Broken record

Published: August 16, 2013;Last modified: August 16, 2013 05:00AM

SCHOOL TEST results have taken on the sound of a broken record — where the same notes play over and over again.

The latest scores released by the Colorado Department of Education show that little progress was displayed on the Transitional Colorado Assessment Program at schools in Pueblo’s two districts. TCAP is the successor to the CSAP tests.

TCAP assesses students in grades three through eight in math, reading and writing, and students in grades five, eight and 10 in science. Pueblo City Schools (D60) students made minimal gains in middle and high school math but continued to score below the state average in every subject and grade level except for third grade reading.

District 70 student scores slipped slightly in some subjects, although the rural/suburban district continued to outpace D60. Still, scores in D70 were nothing to write home about.

Somebody should turn off the TV and engage kids in learning.

Meanwhile, local high school juniors showed little improvement in scores on the ACT college entrance exam this spring. District 70’s Southern Colorado Early College, a charter school, scored the highest of all local high schools and was the only one to score higher than the state average. Pueblo City Schools’ Centennial had the highest score in the district and the only school to show improvement from last year.

Generally, middle school students showed a dropoff in TCAP testing. City schools officials are pinning their hopes on revamped middle schools.

Pitts, now renamed the Pueblo Academy of Arts, and Risley International Academy of Innovation, have joined Roncalli STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) Academy in charting new curricula in an effort to attract students to schools where their interests lie. We hope these changes will yield better results.

We are reminded, however, that it’s been 30 years since President Ronald Reagan stood before the press and television cameras and held up a report titled A Nation at Risk. Eighteen months in the making and written by the blue-ribbon members of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, the report examined the quality of education in the United States — and the findings were anything but stellar.

“Our nation is at risk,” the report boldly declared in its first sentence.

“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war,” the report said. “As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.”

So we continue to hope beyond hope that the changes being made in local schools will help improve the education of our young people. We can’t afford to risk more lives with inadequate schooling.